Walk Away, The Romance of Nick and Layla (Part 1) (3 page)

"What are you doing here Nick?" I
poured the martini mix into two glasses and handed him one.

"A husband can’t spend time with his
wife?"

"Not you. Not this wife."

He took a long sip from his glass, keeping
his eyes on me. What was he thinking? That we’d get drunk and make love in
every room in the house? Been there. Done that. I took a sip of my martini and
looked away from him again. He could be so intense sometimes.

"How do you think she came up with
that
rumor
?" he asked me.

"Who?"

"Missy Page."

I shrugged my shoulders and leaned on the
counter, leaning closer to him. "She probably got a tip from someone who
recognized me the day I went to the
gynecologist
. And
her being the little wench that she is she decided to think of the most obvious
thing. That I’m pregnant."

"But you’re not."

"No, Nick, I’m not. We’ve already had
this discussion." I picked up my drink and headed towards my bedroom. I
could hear Nick following me, his footsteps padding softly along the carpet.

"How crazy would that be? Having a kid
together, I mean. A little carbon copy of us."

"Nick, that would be an act of God.
I’d be more concerned about your one night stands getting pregnant all of a
sudden. You see them more than you see me."

"Must be driving you nuts." I
could practically hear the teasing smile in his voice. Everything in the world
must exist solely for his entertainment. Especially me.

I stopped walking. I had to keep myself
from dropping my alcohol all over the floor. I turned around slowly and looked
at him with a raised eyebrow. "Excuse me?"

"All that thinking you do. All of your
worrying."

"Believe it or not Nick you do not
occupy my mind 24/7. I do have a life."

"Right. Your lovely, fancy, happy
little life here."

"What are you getting at? This was our
agreement. I am the back-up girl and live here while you be the slut in our
home. Isn’t that the perfect arrangement for you, Nick? You get to have your
cake and eat it as much as you want?"

"Well you weren’t exactly protesting
as you boxed up all your stuff and hauled it all out here. Why is that, by the
way?"

What an ass. I just rolled my eyes and
walked into my room, setting down my glass by the bed and unpinning bobby pins
from my hair. "You didn’t seem to mind it too much when I found out you
were cheating on me and I turned my head the other way. I pretended that
everything was still fine. I played our little game."

"And how many times have I asked to
stop playing the game?"

"Including this morning? Once. Once
out of how many months?" I slipped out of the stilettos and stretched my
toes across the carpet. I glanced down at the clock. It was barely ten and I
knew it would be hours before I could pour myself into bed. Hell, maybe I’d
just drink myself to sleep. "Besides, you couldn’t be faithful to me if
you tried."

"Yes I can. I can be faithful."

Sure. "That’s not enough for me Nick.
I want more than that. That’s why I married you."

"Oh, so that’s why? And here I thought
it was the sex." What a bastard. Didn’t he know how to be anything but
conceited? I don’t know why I put up with his bullshit sometimes.

That’s a lie. I know why. Whoever asked
what’s love got to do with it obviously never met Nick Hudson. I pulled a
padded hanger from my closet and hung it up on a door frame. I slipped my dress
up and over my head and hung it on the hanger to breathe. And then my heart
stopped. I felt Nick’s hand touch my skin gently, just at my shoulders, and
move down my naked back along the curve of my spine.

"How can I be faithful when you don’t
have enough faith in me to at least try?" It was the softest I had heard
him speak in a long time. I closed my eyes and slowly drifted further into my
pain. His touch was electric. It always tore my heart up to pieces. But my skin
always reacted to his touch, bumps raising, hair standing on end, skin heating.

"How can you possibly trust me if you
don’t believe in me?" he asked. My breath caught in my throat as he
caressed the back of my neck, from my hairline down to the tops of my
shoulders. He was always so good at this. He made me so powerless just by
touching me. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t speak.

"I think about you every day, Layla.
Think about how much I’d love to have you in our home again. You may have moved
away, but you never left my heart."

"Nick," I whispered. It was the
only attempt I could make to stop him. His hands were only gone for a minute
then, but I felt them again, this time running down my arms. He pulled me
against his chest and I could feel his skin touching mine. He was so warm. So
soft. So manipulative. Oh but I didn’t care. I was lost in him. Lost in his
touch. This pain he inflicted upon me was burning me up. I bit my bottom lip
and tried to stop myself from moaning.

I opened my eyes as my courage came back to
me. I turned around so that I was facing him, my bare chest against his bare
chest. I looked deep into his blue eyes and found what I was looking for.

"Just because you can speak the way
you do doesn’t mean I’m going to give in. You’re still a bastard and I’m still
not interested in being taken advantage of." I ran my hands along his
cheeks and down to his neck. Instinctively I pulled him down towards me and our
lips connected. I kissed his bottom lip and pulled away with it slowly before
letting go. He rested his forehead against mine and brushed his fingers through
my hair, gently massaging my scalp.

"Can’t we just pretend for a minute
that we’re not seriously fucked up, Layla? Just for tonight?"

"And what about tomorrow?" I saw
something change in his eyes and I didn’t know what it was. "You’ll go
back home, back to your life? And I’ll live mine here?"

"Or you could come back with me."

"No. I won’t share a bed with you. Not
when you bring others in it."

"I won’t."

"Yes, Nick, you will. From this moment
on I’m not your backup. You make me your wife, the only woman in your life...
Or I’ll make you my ex-husband. What’s it going to be?"

"You and Nick had sex last
night?"

I looked up at Dr. Brown and felt uneasy. I
always felt uneasy when talking to her about Nick. I always felt like she was
judging me. I know she’s supposed to remain objective but if I were in her
shoes I’d probably judge me. "Yes," I said, my voice strong and
untainted by emotion. "Three times."

Dr. Brown nodded her head and jotted
something on a legal pad. "And when was the last time you and your husband
engaged in intercourse?"

I looked up to the ceiling as if the date
were written on it. "Another awards show in January. In Vegas."

"So about two months."

"I guess." This is the way our
sessions usually went. I would talk and then Dr. Brown would ask a question
that would inevitably reiterate whatever I had just said. Then she’d jot it
down, follow-up with a question that only adds further detail to the previous
reiterating question and nod her head. And then I’d say something extremely
intelligent along the lines of ‘I guess’ or ‘Sure, that sounds about right’.
Then I’d look at the clock to see how much longer I had.

Twenty-five minutes. Damn.

"Where is Nick right now, Layla?"

"In bed. He wasn’t awake yet when I
left."

"Does he know about your sessions with
me?"

"I’ve mentioned it a few times but I
seriously doubt he paid attention."

"All right. Let’s talk about last
night. What happened?"

It was all I could do to keep the memory
from taking over my body. I could still feel the touch of him on me. "Nick
and I went to the Grammys, came back to my house, had a few drinks, started
kissing, which then led to having sex. Three times."

"And how do you feel about that?"
she asked. She adjusted a button on her blazer but kept her full attention on
me and my messed up problems.

"I don’t mind. Nick usually likes to
do it more than once."

Dr. Brown smiled politely. "I mean,
how do you feel about having sex with Nick?"

"I’m
favorable
to it when I’ve been drinking. That’s when I forget about how much of a jerk he
is."

"So you never sleep with your husband
when you’re sober?"

Is she kidding me? "Doctor Brown, I
don’t want to have sex only under circumstances of alcoholic inebriation. I’d
like to have sex with my husband every night, possibly twice or three times or
more a day. However, Nick has decided that his penis should be shared by as
many of his adoring f as possible. Therefore, he gives it up to all of them and
not to me."

"And how do you feel about that?"

Jesus Christ. I swear to God that the very
first class any future therapist takes is How Do You Feel About That 101. "What
am I going to do to stop it?"

"Ask yourself this question: What am I
not
doing to stop Nick from sleeping with other women?"

What am I not doing to stop Nick from
sleeping with other women? I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
"This is a trick question."

"How do you figure?" she asked
me.

"Because if I tell you what I think
I’m not doing to stop Nick from sleeping with other girls won’t you just say,
‘Well Layla, why don’t you do that?’?"

"Not necessarily. The point of this
exercise is to give you clarity."

"Doctor Brown, no offense but... The
point of Pilates is to make my ass look like a Kardashian. Only after a year of
Pilates it looks more like a slightly rounded pancake, which I can live with.
The point of coming to you is to help me understand why I’m married to such an
asshole and how I can possibly make him fall in love with me again. Only after
a year of coming to you I still can’t figure out what it makes Nick an asshole.
And I have no earthly clue how to make him love me. So wouldn’t you say that
doing Pilates provides more clarity than your so-called therapy?"

"So there it is." She gave me one
of her psychology smiles.

I scrunched my eyebrows ever-so-slightly
and stared blankly at her. Is she for real? Am I really paying a hundred and
fifty dollars an hour for some lady to say ‘so there it is’ without even giving
me a fucking clue first as to what IT is? "There what is?"

"You’re comfortable with settlement.
You’d like to know why you married someone like Nick, but you’re fine with just
realizing that he is the way he is. Am I right?"

"I don’t know. You’re the one with the
PhD, not me."

"Layla, when you and Nick have an
argument would you say you immediately give up trying to defend your side, or
do you concede to whatever his side is? Or do you fight until he believes what
you believe?"

"With Nick Hudson you concede. He’s
the most bull-headed, stubborn man on the planet and there’s no changing his
mind. That’s just the way he is."

"And you’re fine with that?"

"How am I supposed to change
him?"

"I want you to try something Layla.
The next time you and Nick get into an argument over something small, maybe the
best basketball team or the best
flavor
of ice cream,
whatever it may be, I want you to try and change his mind about his own
opinion. If he says the Bulls are the best basketball team and you say that the
Lakers are the best, change his mind. At the end of the argument I want you to
have Nick conceding. Make him think that the Lakers are the best."

"Okay. And how will this help
me?"

"I believe this exercise will help you
to break down a wall. I have been observing you for quite some time and would
say that you have a tendency to give in too quickly. Try to be the victor for
once, not the conquered. Start small. And let me know how it goes."

" You’re telling me to have an
argument with my husband... and to win?"

"Yes."

"But what if he’s right?"

"Don’t let him be. Make you right.
Make him wrong."

"What about my ultimatum?" I
asked. Yeah, what about it? That is why I’m here!

"Ah, yes. Either Nick remains faithful
to you or you’ll divorce him. Is that correct?"

"Yes. I think it’s a perfectly fair
request."

"So do I."

Huh? Wait a minute, since when does a
therapist just agree with you? That’s not what they’re supposed to do! If they
agreed with everything we said we wouldn’t have to see them more than once or
twice.

"I think you have the right, as Nick’s
wife, to be the only woman in his life. By giving Nick the ultimatum you’re
letting him know that you want your relationship to continue on the way it
should. Perhaps by being faced with the idea of possible divorce it will make
him open his eyes and realize what he has before him."